Friday, July 16, 2010

DVD Drive Buying Guides




DVD-ROM drives are dirt cheap today, so don't even bother with plain CD-ROM drives unless you have • Most complete systems with DVD-ROM drives will ship with 12x or 16x DVD-ROM drives today. Also, the x-factor for DVD drives refers to a higher transfer rate: 1x DVD-ROM drives transfer data at the rate of a 9x CD-ROM drive. • DVD-ROM drives can read CD-ROM disks, so if you have a DVD-ROM drive, you don't need an extra CD-ROM drive.

• A consumer can also purchase a "dual-DVD" drive that supports both the DVD-R and DVD+R format, typically known as DVD±R. DVD-R discs are read by the DVD drive through special grooves on the disc known as land prepits, whereas DVD+R measures a disc's wobble frequency. • The only difference between the two formats is the way the DVD drive determines the position of the laser on the disc. • Consumers interested in obtaining a more advanced DVD drive will need to consider other options, such as burners, drives that support DVD-R technology, and drives that support DVD+R technology. Microsoft ships a software DVD movie player with Windows XP that works fine.

• With fast video cards and processors today, you typically don't need any special DVD decoding hardware to play DVD movies. DVD-ROM is a newer standard than CD-ROM, able to read 7 times as much data off of a typical DVD disk (4.7 GB) as opposed to the measly 650MB a CD-ROM drive can read, and also able to play DVD movies with the proper decoding software or hardware.

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